Harry Potter Party

Do you love themed parties!? This Harry Potter themed party can be thrown for any occasion! Whether it is for a HP Lovers Birthday or a Halloween Party. This Harry Potter theme party is a must for any Harry Potter lover out there.

My Sister in Law had a big birthday milestone last year and she is a Harry Potter fan. I asked her Husband if we could throw her a Harry Potter Themed Surprise Party and he said yes, although I don’t think he knew what he was getting into.

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I was inspired and determined after seeing all these really cool ideas on Pinterest. With the help of a lot of family members and friends we threw her an epic Harry Potter Theme Party and we did an AMAZING job.

Yes I am tooting our own horn because this party was a lot of work and took a lot of hours crafting stuff together. When looking back at the pictures I still cannot believe how cool it looked and we got to throw a party like this.

My Sister in Law said they left the house decorated for days after the party. If you are going set up as many decorations as we did make sure you have an amazing crew to help you set up and a few hours to get everything ready.

My Mother in law took my Sister in law (her daughter, AKA the Birthday girl in this story) shopping for her Birthday which is how we got the house to ourselves all day.

This party was a commitment but worth every minute especially when we saw the surprise on my Sister in Law’s face when she walked into her house. There is no way we could have pulled this off without the help of friends and family!

Potion Bottles – Almost all of the bottles were bought at Hobby Lobby (tip wait until glassware goes on sale, ask an employee about rotation of sale items). If you don’t know what Hobby Lobby is (I assume they are everywhere but I am not sure) here are some potion bottles from Amazon that will work too.

I downloaded some Harry Potter fonts just by googling “Harry Potter Fonts” . I printed names of HP potions on regular paper and then we made it look old. We soaked the paper in tea on a baking sheet then drained the water after a few hours. Then the wet paper was baked in the oven at 200 until dry.

I cut out the potion names and then burned the edges. I added each potion name to the bottles with double-sided tape. Lastly I filled each bottle at a different level with water and dropped food coloring in. Poof, you have Potion Bottles!

Add a cauldron and some dry ice to make it look even more dramatic like we did above! Totally a friends idea with and it added the perfect effect! Potion bottles included Unicorn Blood, Elixir of Life, Polyjuice, Felix Felicis, just to name a few.

Floating Candles – This was probably the most time-consuming thing I made! Plus hanging them up was no easy task for my husband and his Dad which were given the job. I found instructions on Pinterest and in all honesty, it is what started the idea of the party. All of this can be found on my Harry Potter Board on Pinterest which I finally unlocked over a year after the party (it was a surprise so I had to keep it a secret). But basically we asked everyone to keep paper towel and toilet paper rolls so we could make them into floating candles.

After gathering we used hot glue guns to make the “wax drippings” on the rolls by running the hot glue gun up and down the roll, then spray painted them all white. After they dried we traced the bottom of the roll to a piece of white paper then cut it out and taped to the bottom of each roll.

To make them hang from the ceiling, we cut very long strings of fishing line. Measure first to see how long you need to cut by making a “trial one” and hang from the ceiling. Use that as your guide to how long they need to be, it does not have to be exact it will look fine if they are a little shorter. You just do not want to go to much longer.

Cut all your fishing line strings first then on the inside of the roll at the opened top (where the battery operated tea lit candle will go) follow inside edge with hot glue gun around the entire roll (just along the inside edge) then add fishing line while glue is hot.

Think of it as, you are lining the inside of the toilet paper roll with a thick layer of hot glue. This makes a little “holder” for the tea lit candle to sit in- you will have to figure out how much hot glue to use by trying to put a candle in. The tea lits we used were to small for the roll which is why we needed to do this.

Tip – Make sure to put a candle in each one so you know it fits OK and does not fall out. We made these a few weeks before the party, then finished up a few days before. Hang each candle from the ceiling with a clear push pin. Add tea lit candles as you hang up so you can turn them on. DON”T FORGET TO TURN THEM ON AS YOU HANG THEM UP.

Harry Potter Hogwarts School Invitations Flying out of Fireplace – If you are a Harry Potter fan you know the scene here! Harry’s house gets bombarded with envelopes with an invitation to The Hogwarts School. His family was keeping them from him so magic came into place and thousands of envelopes filled the house and flew out of the fireplace.

My brother-in-law found a Harry Potter wax envelope sealer kit and I bought a bunch of white evnelopes. My mom has amazing handwriting so I had her write the address on a bunch of envelopes.

Then we strung the envelopes with fishing line and thumb tacked to the ceiling then tied the other ends to the grate in the fireplace so they looked like they were flying out.

Keepsake Magic Wands – My Dad helped with these and he totally took the lead on designing them. He gathered up a bunch of “wand size” branches and sanded them down until super smooth and then stained them.

We let each guest pick out their wand and take them home as a party favor. No wand is the same so every stick was different. Mom Bonus – Have your little kids help collect the sticks, Harper helped collect all of these with my Dad! Super bonus these were practically FREE to make!

Dementors & Spider – Dementors and Spider were both made with balloons. For the Dementors I put a balloon up underneath a black plastic table-cloth (old black sheets or thrift store black sheets would work too – depends on your budget and time black plastic table cloths are easy to find) then took a pair of scissors to it and just went to town cutting to shreds.

The spider was two black balloons blown up two different sizes. We taped decorating party paper to the balloons for the legs just and taped everything to the wall.

Food – Since we knew we were going to be busy decorating we had a pot luck dinner and asked guests to bring Harry Potter themed sides. Hats off to all of our friends and family that brought all the HP themed food because they totally outdid themselves.

Our menu was Brats and Burgers and all the sides had clever names like Hufflepuffs – Cheetos; Broomsticks – String cheese cut a little on a pretzel stick wrapped with chive; Mrs. Weasley’s Potato Salad in cups; Twizzlers – Magic Wands; Sour Worms – Sour Slugs and of course jelly beans! We also had the Harry Potter flavored jelly beans, found on Amazon!

I made chocolate frogs with a frog mold found on Amazon. Buy the chocolate almond bark, it is best for melting and taste good by itself too. Melt it down and pour into the frog molds and refrigerate until hard. Pop out of the molds and serve on a platter.

You can even buy the little boxes they come in from the movie on Etsy, there are printables or you can buy them. My mother in law made a strawberry cake as well to be like the one Hagrid made for Harry for his birthday. Need ideas for Harry Potter themed food for your party? Visit my Harry Potter Pinterest Board for tons of awesome ideas.

Other Party Details – My Brother in Law found labels to print out for soda bottles and he also found a recipe for Butter Beer. He also had the Harry Potter Book cake made from their favorite Baker, which made their wedding cake when they got married and it was AWESOME and delicious.

We had a ton of printables all over the house for extra decorations and they added just the right touch. A similar Hogwarts Map can be found here. It is not the exact Hogwarts Poster we had but very similar (the one we had cam in pieces). We really transformed the house into Harry Potter land which was our goal.

My Brother in Law and friends outdid themselves on the Quidditch Beer Pong table. They used green plastic table cloths to cover the pool table and and made mini Quidditch goals.

Don’t forget the Bathrooms! Easy Decor for the Bathroom, write in red lipstick on the mirror ” The Chamber of Secrets has been opened enemies of the heir Beware” . Find a picture of Moaning Myrtle and tape it to the toilet or somewhere in the bathroom. We even had the Moaning Myrtle sound effects!

We even made a 9 3/4 door; the brick background was found here on Amazon with a 9 3/4 printable taped on. We just taped the backdrop to the door and then added the sign with tape. Boom you have a 9 3/4 door with a Harry Potter world on the other side.

We also had the famous Have you seen this wizard sign as a photo prop to take pictures with. We added a brick background for the photo backdrop and it made for some really fun pictures.

We found our costumes on Amazon too (Pinterest and Amazon could rule the world one day)! They even had a wand pocket!!! They were awesome and we have worn them at least three times so was worth the money we spent on them.

Do you love Harry Potter or are you planning a Harry Potter Party, visit my Harry Potter Board on Pinterest for more inspiration and ideas!

Some of these photographs provided by cousin to the family, Jennifer. Click here for her page info and if you are in the Dallas area she’s awesome and just the sweetest!

Special thanks to My Brother in Law (and Sister in law unknowingly) for allowing us to throw the party and decorate their house with so much Harry Potter stuff! Could not have had all the awesome decorations we did without my Mother in Law’s help and who has awesome decorating skills. There are so many people to thank for this party my parents included who helped out with the wands and envelopes, and all of my sister in laws family and friends that helped decorate and brought the themed food!

This is so awesome! I LOVE Harry Potter! I like that you really paid attention to detail to make this party awesome. I love doing DIY Harry Potter projects. I haven’t done a party yet, but I have made a couple DIY Harry Potter board games and have redone several wooden chairs with paint and Harry Potter fabric.

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